Low risk of HIV and the effect of PEP

Apr 18, 2013

Hello Dr Young.
I am currenty in PEP treatment for 5 days for having safe oral and vaginal sex with an african prostitute. The reason I am on PEP is because I masturbated with mi fingers deep into the female vagina, and I had recently made hang-nails and wounds in my fingers due to my bad habit of eating my nails. In addition I rubbed my eyes just after having my fingers with her fluids.
I freaked out and run to the emergency center and began the treatment. I didnt lie at all. They agreed on giving me the treatment, I would think because of my nervousness at that time.
The HIV status of the female is unknown but I have my doubts.
Now that some days happened I have the following questions:
1. Do you think i had risk of contracting HIV because of the facts i told you?
2.I am worried about the side effects of the medicaments I am taking Kaletra (4 each day) + Truvada (1 each day). Im having nauseas and diarrhea and had pale stool despite i was completely healthy before this.
Do you think I should take just the Truvada?
3.I am concerned too about the long term side effects that I read in the information pamphlet like lypodistrophy, liver or pancreas problems, or lactic acidosis. Could this happen in a 28 days treatment?

Thank you for your time and patience, and sorry for my english. Im not an english native speaker.

Response from Dr. Young

Hello and thanks for posting. Don't worry about your english, the key thing is being able to communicate (and thanks to Google for translate.google.com when it's needed).

1) I think that you had negligible risk of HIV infection- indeed, I probably wouldn't have suggested PEP.

2) Diarrhea is a common side effect of Kaletra; I tend to recommend three (not two) drug therapy for exposures of substantial enough risk to justify PEP. (ie., if the risk was really low, don't bother).

3) The serious side effects that you've listed are not associated with the short duration of PEP.

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